MUBI Blog

For the first time, Karlovy Vary in Czech Republic is teaming up with MUBI to show some of its competition films online. During Karlovy Vary, July 2nd to 10th, 2010, 4 films from their competition program will be playing for free on the site.

Films in the online program from the Karlovy Vary Film Festival include:

Czech film competition available (almost) everywhere but Czech Republic

3 Seasons in Hell, Dir. Tomáš Mašín, 110min, Czech Republic, Germany, Slovakia, 2009 
1947. Nineteen-year-old Ivan is the embodiment of the dreams and ideals of the period. The self-satisfied and confrontational poet finds understanding with freethinking Jana, and together they experience the end of hope: after February 1948, the Communist regime reveals its repressive side…. Tomáš Mašín’s debut feature is loosely inspired by the autobiography of leftist underground guru Egon Bondy. The artistically striking retro film took three Czech Lions: Best Camera, Sound, and Actor (Kryštof Hádek)

Dreamers (Zoufalci), Dir. Jitka Rudolfová, 97min, Czech Republic, 2009 
Now in their thirties, the film’s six protagonists, who left northern Bohemia for Prague after graduating from high school, are taking stock of their lives. Is it too soon for a change? Or perhaps it’s too late because it’s hard to jump off a moving train. Jitka Rudolfová’s debut is a generational statement that perceives the relationship problems of today’s 30-somethings with understanding and ironic detachment.

International competition available only in Czech Republic

Lebanon, Dir. Samuel Maoz, 94 min, Israel, France, Germany, Lebanon, 2009
An Israeli tank crew hits the ground hard during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon in this claustrophobic, visceral look at the Middle East conflict. Winner of the Venice Film Festival’s prestigious Golden Lion for Best Film, this Das Boot in a tank follows four luckless young men as they roll through a Lebanese town to separate civilians from the PLO, with predictably chaotic results. At first few villains, and fewer heroes, are in sight, with the only constant being the oppressive heat and sweat-laden interior of the tank. When something goes dangerously wrong, however, the situation escalates beyond all control and all reason. Joining a body of work that includes Waltz with Bashir and Beaufort, Lebanon addresses the madness of the Lebanon War through a first-person account. Writer/director Samuel Maoz was a naïve young recruit when he was sent to the same war, and his experiences there traumatized him for years afterwards. Placing viewers directly into the action, uncertain of what’s going on around them, surrounded by the noise and chaos of the outside world yet with literally no “viewpoint” out of the little box in which they find themselves, Maoz’s Lebanon creates a pointed metaphor for not just the Lebanon War but many other wars and conflicts. Alex Claude’s sound design of mechanical drones and muted explosions and a rumbling, sinister score by Nicolas Becker add to the film’s memorable, unsettling effect and turn Lebanon into a key work of an emerging Israeli new wave.

80 Egunean (For 80 Days), Dir. Jon Garaño and José Mari Goenaga, 105 min, Spain, 2010 
The theme of love among old people, neglected by the film world as elsewhere and viewed out of perspective, is seldom treated on the big screen. Axun and Maite met at secondary school during a repressive era that never allowed their relationship to go beyond friendship. Later on, their paths led them apart: Axun got married and moved out to the country to live on a farm, while Maite travelled the world, clarified her sexual orientation in her own mind, and now, having had a successful career as a piano teacher, she has returned to San Sebastian to take up her retirement. Fifty years on, Axun and Maite, now both seventy, meet up by chance while visiting patients in hospital. At first, they don’t recognise one another, but soon long- suppressed feelings begin to emerge once more with the same intensity, and Axun is aware for the first time of her chance to start something entirely new. Feelings once illicit which, fifty years ago, she was unable and forbidden to identify, force her to reassess her marriage and to embark on a journey of self-knowledge. When Maite invites her to the island of Santa Clara, Axun has to decide whether to obey her heart, or her reason…

See the Karlovy Vary Film Festival Cinema on MUBI.